Great. The water supply got cut off yesterday night when I was going to bathe. Reason why? It seemed that nobody really knows even though we attempted to enquire from the landlady. Some of us thought that there is water limit as it was like midnight at that point of time. Leaving with no choice, I had to wipe myself. I think in Singapore we are really blessed to have stable water supply for 24/7. I think if Singapore implements water limit the whole country might most likely just die from it.

Oh well, lessons have started for this week and I really have to say that Traditional Chinese Medicine is really interesting and it has started to change some of my perspective towards Chinese Medicine in the past. I often see my father in the past coming back and his back has circle marks which I find that it was kind of disturbing. However, now I know what the rationale behind it is. It really depicts of what my father was suffering which has got something to do with the wind.



In fact, many people might find that Chinese Medicine is rather difficult to believe in as there is the involvement of 5 elements, which to some people they might not believe it. However, the 5 elements Sheng and Ke (Growth and Counter) Cycle is something that is kind of abstract for people to understand the meaning behind it. Just like what we were talking about in the first lecture, it is just what perspective of what you are looking at.

So, we went for a campus tour again on Monday to look at the other parts of the school, which we visited the School of Info Engineering and School of Life Science.



Generally, I didn’t have much to comment on the School of Info Engineering but apparently, their chairs in the classroom gave me a shock.



It was covered with Fungi! I seriously wonder what the school is doing when they have this kind of condition of chairs. Singapore students will be really shocked if one day we walk into the class and we see this kind of situation.

After walking from one end of the campus to the other end, we finally reached School of Life Science in WUST. The funny thing is that it is also located at the borders of the school which is almost like Ngee Ann? I wonder if it is for convenience of escaping if there is any accidents.



The Anatomy & Physiology laboratory here is seriously the best. Why? They have real specimens for you to look at and they actually labeled it before they sealed it into the glass block. As gore as it is, if Ngee Ann have this, I think it would be really be impressive as it will really open up our minds.



Then, we on to the pharmaceuticals laboratories and there is a lot of comparison to make between our laboratories and theirs. However, I believe that most of the equipments or reagents were not displayed out as the tables were clear.



The laboratories don’t really differ much from Singapore except the fact that some of the equipments are older. They also have Safety Regulations to be obeyed by both the teachers and the students also.



Now, I am interested to know how the way they study when is like they have almost the same equipment as us. This will be answered in my study plan.

Finally we had our first IS lesson for the week. So for this week, we did History, Geography and Culture of Wuhan. For our IS module, it was a China lecturer who is teaching us and for every lecture, the lecturer will be different. So for today, we got Anna/谢老师!



China’s history is really very rich and I suppose that if we were to talk about everything, it will really take more than one year. I am really amazed that so many events happened in Wuhan. One thing that I really need to credit is that Anna speaks good English although at some point of time, she did direct translation.

One point that I would strongly agree with what Anna said is that we are losing our some of our cultural roots. I got to know this from one of the points that she was talking, which is food in China. Usually, Chinese will eat mung bean cakes during summer, rice dumplings during Dumpling Festival, moon cakes during Mid Autumn Festival and dumplings during December. However, she mentioned that we can get them now and then due to the demand of it which she claims that it doesn’t have any “excitement” to look forward to.

I believe that this is also happening in Singapore, such as we are abusing some of the special things that we eat on special occasions by having them all year round. I find that it sort of made the festival that we are celebrating feel kind of redundant as the food we can get them whole year round.

This same applies for Chinese New Year. Anna said that the Chinese in China they also had reunion dinner and celebrations during it also. However, the fact that shocked me was that their attitude towards the celebration of it is almost the same as the modern Singaporeans. She claims that they will also have reunion dinner and then they will sit together to watch the New Year Celebration show which they find that it is almost also a routine to them for Chinese New Year now.

I find that this is a very sad thing to be happening as festivals should be something that we look forward so that we can have gatherings with our families and have the special food that we have for the festival with them. How could it just become a routine in this society now? That’s why most of the Chinese don’t even know how to speak their dialect (properly) and some don’t even feel the pride in speaking their own mother tongue.

Lesson ended and when I was walking back to the hostel, I saw what I saw in the morning again.



Weird isn’t it? Uniform group assembling during curriculum time? To add on, some of the officers (I suppose) in blue uniform, they are staying in the same hostel as us. After asking some people like the landlady, it was said that they were not students of this school. However, Dr Tan said that this is something like their Freshman Orientation Camp but it is done in the uniform group style. Hmm, interesting… I should really find out what is it about soon. If it is something like what Dr Tan said, I think that it might be a really new experience if we were to execute it in Singapore. We might not be able to do this also because I think some of the students might not be able to take it? Maybe that is why also Singapore students are deemed as the Strawberry tribe.

Oh well, gotta sleep early to wake up early for the excursion tomorrow. I will have tonnes of photos to post again for the weekends.

Good news, I finally found food that is edible to me and the taste is close to Singapore.

Yang Chou Fried Rice



Shrimp Dumplings